
The Need for Night and Day Prayer:
Now that we have established one of the foundations of prayer, namely the context, we move onto the necessity of saints to pray. Jesus, in one of His parables, gave us a unique insight into the plight of humanity and the nature of God in relation to the prayers of the saints, which is seen in Luke 18:7-8:
‘God will bring about justice for His elect who cry out to Him day and night’
This verse gives us the basic outline that exemplifies the necessity for prayer. The basis rests in our inherent need for justice. Now justice manifests itself in various ways according to the nature of the injustice. For example, justice in regards to sickness would be healing or in regards to sin would be punishment or bondage would be deliverance. Every human uniquely qualified for prayer in that each one of us has an inherent need and each one of us has been profoundly affected by injustice. The inherent injustice in the earth and the invisible cosmic battle that surrounds us is one the foundational understandings that the necessity of prayer rests. These two issues require a response and that response is prayer. In other words, if we desire to see people saved, set free from bondage and the spiritual climate to change then the first option we have is prayer.
This scripture then gives us an astonishing promise that any conscious saint would rejoice in, namely that God acts on the prayers of His saints. He breaks into time and space to put wrong to right. Prayer simply being agreement with God and His Word. Intercession being involved or in agreement with what God has promised to do, yea, even revealed is longing to do. A good example of this is Isaiah 62:1,6 – when the Lord speaks of His own zeal to restore Jerusalem:
For Zion’s sake I will not keep silent, And for Jerusalem’s sake I will not keep quiet, Until her righteousness goes forth like brightness, And her salvation like a torch that is burning (vs.1)
And then speaks of ‘setting watchmen on the wall’, which are consumed with His zeal for that same city:
On your walls, O Jerusalem, I have appointed watchmen; All day and all night they will never keep silent. You who remind the LORD, take no rest for yourselves (vs.6)